This post is the seventh in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs.
See.
Hear.
Taste.
Touch.
Smell.
Unless they are somehow compromised, all five senses guide us through the world, working with our minds to help us “make sense” of our experiences. Sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and scents can therefore serve as powerful memory prompts. Memoir writers often seem to know this intuitively, and during the editorial process they will sometimes say things to me like:
“I want this chapter to really capture the flavor of my childhood.”
Or “This should give readers a taste of what things were like.”
Or “I need to add a little texture to the description of my grandmother.”
Or “Can you help me smooth out this paragraph?”
Or “This scene needs more color, don’t you think?”
Whether or not they use such sensory language to describe what they feel their work needs, I often encourage writers to engage their senses when they are trying to add detail to their manuscripts so that readers can more fully appreciate the context of their life stories. I might offer prompts like:
What could you see from your childhood bedroom window?
What did your uncle’s laugh sound like?
What is a favorite flavor or spice in your family’s cooking?
Can you describe how the dress you’re wearing in this photograph felt against your skin?
What did the perfume your great-grandmother wore smell like?
When I was teaching, a colleague gave me the good advice that I should never give an assignment that I hadn’t completed myself at least once in order to align myself with my students’ experience as learners. In that spirit, I will use the final question posed above to let the sense of smell guide me through memories and connections to family in the rest of this piece.
Close-up of dried lavender in a vase from Megan St. Marie's wedding-day centerpieces, now placed in her Modern Memoirs office
My Modern Memoirs office usually smells like lavender because of an essential oil diffuser I set up across from my desk. I placed it there after putting dried lavender in vases from my wedding-day centerpieces atop two bookcases and lining a small shelf with three sachets. I’ve always loved the clean, floral scent of lavender, and although my French ancestors mainly came from the Normandy and Île-de-France regions of France, rather than Provence with its famous lavender fields, the flower and its perfume make me feel connected to that part of my heritage.
Megan St. Marie's great-grandmother Pamela "Pom" Gertrude Cantin Meyer, circa 1962
One reason for this sense of connection may be that my great-grandmother Pamela “Pom” Gertrude Cantin (whom I called “Memé”) wore Jean Naté perfume, which includes lavender notes. She was une femme fière (a proud woman), with hair perfectly coiffed in keeping with her decades of work as a hairdresser, and always dressed to the nines in her pearls and colorful dresses, blouses, and slacks. Her outward appearance and Jean Naté fragrance now strike me as representative of her fierce independence and drive.
The sixth of fourteen children born to French Canadian immigrants Eugenie Duchesne and Magloire Cantin in 1899, my Memé suffered a childhood illness that left her functionally deaf for the rest of her life. She never learned sign language, but got by in the hearing world by reading lips, using hearing aids, and speaking very loudly. She raised her two daughters Rita (my maternal grandmother) and Dorothy (called Dottie) on her own after her husband abandoned them during the Great Depression. I imagine this was a particularly difficult situation for her as a Franco American Catholic woman, but she rose above it with determination and dignity, eventually opening her own hair salon in the Boston area.
Memé was about to turn 77 when I was born, and she died when I was 20. I feel very fortunate that I had her in my life for so long. My mother was close with her, and their closeness inspired my own efforts to bond with Memé during visits in Vermont and at her apartment in eastern Massachusetts and through cards and letters sent back and forth in the mail. During a lonely time spent travelling with a family as a nanny during the summer before I went to college, I sent Memé a postcard every day, and she responded with great frequency. Homesick and nostalgic, I remember smelling the stationery on which she wrote, trying and failing to pick up the Jean Naté fragrance I knew so well.
Close-up of lavender sachets in Megan St. Marie's office, made by her aunt Rita Lambert Lavallee with fabric upcycled from placemats stitched by Anastasie "Tazzy" Raymond Lambert. Left to right, the designs embroidered on the sachets symbolize: the 4th of July when the Lambert family gathers for an annual family reunion; a lamb for the surname Lambert; and a heart in honor of Rita's late sister Barbara Lambert Chevalier, whose birthday was on Valentine's Day
Megan St. Marie's great-grandmother Anastasie "Tazzy" Raymond Lambert, circa 1905
I didn’t know my other great-grandmothers, who all died before I was born. And yet, the scent of lavender connects me to one of them, as well. My aunt Rita Lambert Lavallee, who made the sachets now in my office, made this connection for me when she wrote about her decision to fill them with dried lavender. The sachets’ fabric originated as placemats made many decades ago by her paternal grandmother, Anastasie “Tazzy” Raymond Lambert. Aunt Rita told me that she remembered visiting this grandmother’s house as a little girl and really liking a scent in the bathroom there, though she didn’t know what it was. Years later as an adult, she bought something with a lavender scent, and only then did she realize that it was the same fragrance she’d loved when visiting her grandmother’s house.
Lavender in a garden bed at Heather Lambert Bessette's home in Vermont, grown in honor of the late Barbara Lambert Chevalier, who was an aunt to her, Megan St. Marie, and their Lambert cousins
Perhaps this association with their Lambert grandmother was what inspired my Aunt Barbara Lambert Chevalier (Rita’s elder sister) to plant lavender in the beautiful garden beds she placed around the family homestead in Highgate, Vermont. I can’t ask her now because she passed away a few years ago before I realized this familial proclivity for lavender; but, I know that at least one cousin, Heather Lambert Besette, picked up on Aunt Barb’s love of lavender and planted some at her own house in a garden that now stands as something of a memorial to our aunt.
Being surrounded by things—including scents—that ground me in a love of family and remembrance of those who came before me sparks affinity with Modern Memoirs clients, who are often moved by those same feelings when they come to us with their book projects. And although I can’t make the soothing lavender that inspired this piece waft out through the words you are reading, I can offer a closing invitation to engage your senses and inspire creativity:
See.
Hear.
Taste.
Touch.
Smell.
Remember.
Write.